Hey folks,
I really appreciate the kind thoughts, and I'm sorry for the delay between posts. I'm doing quite well, actually, in terms of my health. I haven't had a drink since the middle of last month, and I've lost 9 lbs (4.1 kg) without changing my diet much beyond no longer pouring 1000 Calories down my throat every night.
In chemistry, a change from one state to another requires energy. From experience, it seems that my cyclical transitions from a regular drunk to a sober person and back again have required, or used up, my creative energy while the change was in progress. So I don't write much during those times.
I might have an essay by William S. Burroughs stored away somewhere claiming that cycles of decay and renewal can actually be healthy for people in the long run. Burroughs was in the generation of the Beat Poets--with Kerouac and Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, and he was a smoker, a drinker, a user of heavy drugs, and an intermittent addict for more than half a century, so it's not surprising that he would write an essay in defense of his lifestyle. In his objective defense, he did live to be 83 years old.
You never know; it's possible that his genetics would have let him live to be 103 if he'd chosen a healthier path. I figured that he pickled himself, using the Keith Richards method. I always pictured him as an elderly man, even when he wasn't, but I was wrong about that...somewhat.
Here he is--with Allen Ginsberg in the background--at age 50, looking no more than 5 or 10 years older than his actual age.
And here he's celebrating his 70th birthday at Limelight in 1984, with a certain Club Kid, just prior to her becoming famous.
I was never a fan of Burrough's fiction--Naked Lunch is his most famous work, but the rest of his fiction is pretty similar to it. Page after page of reveling in violent and degrading sex acts, gore, body horror, cannibalism and pedophilia was never my cup of tea, but he writes a mean essay, and his nonfiction collections are worth checking out.
Last edited by suitedjustice; 04-14-2021 at 11:10 PM.